


Acting Out

by SoniaVice



Series: Inside Outside [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Bisexuality, Gay Bar, M/M, Prostitution, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14901011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: Art has an assignment for Raylan and Tim: Go find the fugitive who keeps showing up in the back room of the local gay strip club."Art, no," Tim said. "No way. Send Rachel. Anything. Send me and Rachel. Just do not send me into a gay bar with Raylan Givens."





	Acting Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is set at the start in a magical summertime lull between the end of Season 4, after Raylan has seen to the demise of Nicky Augustine, but before the beginning of Season 5.
> 
> This story contains non-explicit sexual situations, references to sex, violence, crimes, prostitution, original characters all over the place, and a passing reference to Raylan's relationship with Alison.
> 
> Raylan and Jack is the only pairing, although this part is mostly about Raylan alone.

"Raylan, Tim!" Art called.

"Did we do something?" Tim asked from his desk. He hadn't otherwise moved that Raylan could see.

"Don't think so," Raylan answered.

"So, he wants us to do something. Now."

"Generally how it works."

"Does Art know how hot it is out?" Tim asked.

"I reckon he does, Tim."

"Okay," Tim said, and stood and strode off for Art's office like a man who liked the heat and was eager to go out in it. Lexington wasn't Miami, and Raylan just didn't even mind it hot, generally, but they were having a bit of warm spell. Tim made the best face of annoyance when he called it that.

Raylan followed along, and took a chair in Art's office as indicated.

"Gentlemen," Art said with a particular form of relish in his tone that meant whatever they had to do, they weren't going to like.

"Art," Raylan answered cautiously. "You seem pleased."

"Oh, I am, Raylan, I am. You see, you two are going on a special assignment. We have a tip that Barry Morse has been seen in Lexington twice."

"Who's Barry Morse," Tim asked when the silence had stretched on, and Raylan had done his times tables up to the 10s to keep from asking that very question. He didn't want to give Art the satisfaction. The man was plotting something.

"He is a Federal fugitive," Art said. "And that's our job, to go outside and find people like that and put them in jail."

Tim nodded, like Art wasn't mocking him. "He do anything in particular to end up a wanted man?"

"He was arrested in 2005 in possession of a briefcase full of cash that he could not explain the provenance of," Art said, reading off of a file. "The cash was later found to be some of the proceeds from a robbery in Kansas City in 1998, and he was strongly encouraged to explain that in exchange for a lighter sentence. It seems he did, testifying to the money laundering activity of a fellow who was convicted, had his assets seized, the usual. Then in 2012, Morse walked away from a halfway house on his first day out of prison."

"The warrant's still valid?" Raylan asked.

"It is, and to be honest, if we weren't in a bit of a lull, I'd just lob this over to the LPD to do a follow up, but there's another reason why I'm sending you two professional Deputy Marshals."

Raylan raised a brow. Art didn't butter a man up unless he was planning on sliding him someplace he didn't want to go.

"I'm nervous now," Tim said.

"Isn't this a bit small time? He jumped probation?" Raylan asked.

"He did," Art said. "And he did that when the Feebs were supposed to be watching him to see if there was more of that money somewhere. So, if we can find him, figure out what name he's been using, trace his assets …"

"Do we think he's still laundering?" Raylan asked, interested, but not forgetting the gleam in Art's eye.

"Frankly, Raylan, we have no idea. But it's worth a look into the tip, which was very good information. Morse has a distinctive scar on his arm from an incident in prison, and our tipster described it accurately. It's good intel."

"Or a good setup," Tim said dryly.

"Or that. But I talked to the Feeb who was working the case, and he told me some things that make me think this is real."

"Drop the other shoe, Art," Raylan said.

Art looked at him and grinned. "The tip is that he's been seen in the back room at the Go Go Room, once three weeks ago and again five days ago."

"Art, no," Tim said. "No way. Send Rachel. Anything. Send me and Rachel. Just do not send me into a gay bar with Raylan Givens."

Raylan turned and stared, but not before he saw Art frowning at Tim. "You got a problem with this assignment?" Art said, in a tone of warning.

"Yes!" Time sighed. "You have no idea, Art, what it's like to go on a case with this man and have every woman fall for him. None."

"Are you expecting a lot of women in this bar?" Art asked.

"No, Art, I'm expecting the even more horrifying spectacle of all the men in this bar falling in love with Raylan Givens at first sight."

"I don't think that will happen," Raylan said stiffly.

"Want to bet?" Tim asked.

"I thought you didn't want to go?" Raylan countered.

"Art is not going to let me off this hook, Raylan."

Art interrupted. "You're right, I'm not. Raylan, don't let all the men fall in love with you. Tim, someone needs to actually look for Morse, so would you do me a favour and read the file."

"Sure," Tim said, taking the file. "I'll read it aloud to Deputy Givens in between marriage proposals."

"I think you're crazy, Gutterson," Raylan said. "Men do not hit on me in droves."

"No, Raylan, because the percentages are against that. Until you walk into the room where the percentages are in favour of every guy thinking he'd hit that."

Art laughed. "You know, gentlemen, I thought Raylan would have the complaints on this assignment, but this is way more fun."

"Why?" Raylan asked. "I don't have any issues."

"No? So what are you going to say if some guy does hit on you?" Art challenged.

Raylan glanced at Tim and then looked Art in the eye. "Depends if he's my type."

Tim groaned very loudly. "Art, I will pay you cash money to not ask him what that is."

"How much?" Art asked, fixing Tim with a look.

"More than I can afford."

"Well, get out and go do your job then. I'll send you my bill for not asking. Remember to actually try to find Morse, boys."

The Go Go Room was a formerly seedy strip joint that had been transformed into a friendly looking bar in the main room, complete with dance floor and stage. The strippers hadn't been exiled far, though, and the back room, which had been put to more illegal uses for years, had gone semi-legit as a VIP room with dancers in cages and a strip show every night. Or so Tim explained to him on the drive over.

Morse, it turned out, had been noted by FBI surveillance before his arrest in Louisville in a similar establishment on multiple occasions. It wasn't widely known that he liked male strippers, so that was lending the tip some credence.

"They know who the tipster is?" Raylan asked.

"File says anonymous male."

"Figures."

"You been here before?" Tim asked as they pulled up in a downtown street parking spot almost right outside the place.

"Not my sort of joint," Raylan said, and then he stepped out of the car and settled his hat on his head, squared his shoulders and walked to the gay bar like he was totally fine with the idea.

He reached the door first, Tim always stayed a pace or two behind in case Raylan stepped on a land mine or took sniper fire. Raylan was used to it, even if it made conversation difficult. He opened the door, and just to be a dick, he held it and motioned for Tim to go in first.

The Go Go Room was very quiet on a Wednesday afternoon, free of landmines and snipers. The interior was designed to look like an ordinary saloon during the day, with a genuine brass rail on the bar and wooden tables and chairs scattered along the space that let up to an empty stage that was just big enough for a four-piece band made up of fellas who liked each other a lot.

There were hints of neon and coloured spotlights if you knew where to look. It could transform into a totally different sort of bar at the flick of a few switches. Raylan had grown intimately familiar with the way a bar was made to look more or less trashy than it was. The Go Go Room was much less trashy than the joint he lived over, and the lack of a second floor on the building made him sorry for a few minutes that he couldn't upgrade.

"What are we doing?" Tim asked, stopped just inside the door.

"It's a bar," Raylan said, "we go sit at the bar."

Raylan took a stool centred on the spot where the bartender had his pile of busy work — sliced limes heading into a bowl and stacks of beer coasters to get sorted through. The bartender, a very butch fellow with the muscles to make even Tim look lazy, was serving up something in a clear glass cup to a waiting customer.

"Is that iced coffee?" Raylan asked.

"Sure is, cowboy. You want to try it?"

The bartender's voice was a light baritone and he sounded like a singer to Raylan. The music playing was old-time, twangy country, songs of loneliness and heartache, and it suited the look of the bar. The bartender suited the music and the place too.

"Will I like it?" Raylan asked, mildly flirting.

"I don't know. Do you like it when something hot is suddenly cold?"

Raylan made a face. "I don't know, either. Maybe when it's so hot out, I want something cold on my tongue. Let me try it."

Tim interrupted to ask for sweet tea, and the bartender nodded and filled a glass with ice and topped it up out of a pitcher. He set a machine to the task of turning coffee unnaturally cold, and Raylan watched it as if he was interested.

"You boys new in town?" the bartender asked, when Raylan had taken a cautious sip and then one more adventurous gulp.

"I'll tell you straight," Raylan said, and very nearly winked at the man. "We're Deputy US Marshals and we're looking for a man."

"Everybody here is looking for a man," the bartender said, totally deadpan.

"A specific one," Raylan said. "I didn't want you thinking we were trying to put one over on you. What's your name, anyway?"

"Julius."

"Well, Julius," Raylan said. "We're not looking to cause any disturbance, ruffle any feathers."

"Drag night is Tuesday," Tim said, reading a laminated card on the bar.

"What?" Raylan asked.

"Not gonna be any guys in feathers until Tuesday."

Julius looked at Tim with approval, almost smiling. "Who you looking for?" he asked, "One of the boys out back? We make sure they're of age, but we don't run police checks. Takes too long."

"No, no," Raylan said, sipping his coffee. "Some fella we think is just visiting once in a while."

Tim produced the photo of Morse, and Julius looked at it for a long time. "A lot of guys come in — travelling, you know. Truckers and what not."

"What not is more likely than trucker," Tim said.

"You gonna be upset if we come back tonight and talk to the boys out back?" Raylan asked

"I ain't, no. You boys man enough to handle them strippers? They're a rowdy bunch."

"I think we'll live."

"Hey, cowboy, where's the rest of the Village People?"

Raylan turned and poked his hat up off his forehead and looked at the new guy who'd come up behind him. "I don't know, but I'll tell you something, friend, I've been looking in this town for years for some guy who's in the Navy. Ain't never found one."

Julius snorted a laugh, and Tim sighed. "How is it you can tell the worst jokes and every person thinks you're adorable?" Tim demanded.

"Not every person," Raylan said.

"Most of them."

"Not even half."

"How long you two been married?" their new friend asked and then asked Julius for a beer before Raylan could think to reply.

"Who tends the bar at night?" Raylan asked Julius, when the beer and its drinker were gone.

"Young guy, name of Freddie. Blond, so if you like that," Julius glanced at Tim, and then back to Raylan, "you'll be happy."

"He a friendly fella like you?"

"Naw, he's a talker."

Raylan nodded. "Tell him we'll be around. We'll try to be subtle about it."

"You plan on leaving the hat on?" Julius said, and Tim cracked up.

"Yeah," Raylan said, affronted.

"Every date he's ever had started with someone telling him he can leave the hat on," Tim said dryly.

Raylan turned to glare at Tim, and Julius snorted in laughter again. "I feel like you and Julius are cut from the same cloth," Raylan said.

"Likely," Tim said, "Julius, where did you serve?"

"Germany for a long time. That was fun, you know. All the gym time and cute boys a man could want. And then for my sins, they sent me to hell before they shitcanned my gay ass out of theatre."

Tim nodded. "I'd tell you not to feel guilty for leaving, but that takes when it does, not from some guy telling you."

"True enough. You know, for straight cops, you two are alright."

"We ain't cops," Raylan said. He touched his hat and stood up. "You tell Freddie to expect us."

They went back to the office and Raylan took the file from Tim and read up on Mr. Morse. Then, he started looking for pictures of the inside of the Go Go Room online. He found a lot from before the renovation. The strippers had been in the front, the bar was off to one side, and the whole place looked like neon-lit trash.

He saw open drug use in several photos, just by cruising instagram.

He put a call into the city to find out who owned the building, who owned the bar, and when that had changed. He didn't expect to get a call back in a hurry, but it might turn up something.

"You're working this case hard," Tim said.

"Something felt odd about that place."

"Too clean?" Tim asked. "Like it was ready to pass an inspection?"

"Maybe. Maybe, I just see deceit under every rock these days.

"Should we have gone in a little more subtle?" Tim asked.

"Undercover?" Raylan said wryly. "You and me as the married couple who like to go to the strip show every night to spice up our life?"

"Sure. We could have sold that."

"I don't like that sort of bullshit," Raylan said. "And if no one gives us a tip on this guy, we aren't sitting around until we get lucky."

Tim shot him a look.

"Funny."

"So we're going in straight, to use a Raylan joke, and we're asking around?"

"Yeah, we are, and if no one knows this guy, then I think we assume he's coming into town occasionally, and we'd need a friend on the inside to tip us off again."

"You figure the dancers come and go?" Tim asked.

"Likely. You think we should look for some idea which ones were there the dates our guy was there?"

Tim nodded. "I do, but—"

"Will they keep employment records that good? And will they show them off without a warrant?"

Tim sighed. "Maybe if the owner likes cowboys."

"Or sarcastic veterans," Raylan said.

"Yeah, or that."

"We might get lucky," Raylan said.

Freddie was blond as promised, a shade Winona used to call atomic bleached Barbie, but Freddie, in the tightest little shorts that wouldn't quite get you arrested for exposure, was no Ken doll. He wasn't tall enough, for a start.

"Hey, baby, you can definitely leave your hat on," Freddie said in a drawl so Texas, Raylan felt like he should order a tequila even though he hated that shit. Tim sighed loudly.

"Reckon I will," Raylan said. "You want to shoot us a couple of beers when you're ready?"

"Sure, honey."

It wasn't very busy in the bar, and they were a bit early for the back room show, but Freddie finished the fussing around with the cocktail glasses he was occupied with before he cracked a couple of beers. "You a straight from the bottle boy, or you want a little class?" Freddie asked Raylan.

Raylan noted that Tim's was going straight into the glass, expertly poured.

"I tried buying some class once, Freddie, but it didn't take," Raylan told him, letting his own accent crawl up from his hind brain and sit on his tongue with more flavour than the beer offered. It was too early for bourbon to wash it all away. Not that bourbon generally lessened it any.

"No, it don't generally stick to a man," Freddie said, then lowered his voice and added, "Julius told me who you boys are."

"I don't think we're hiding that," Tim said. "We just want to find this guy without a fuss." He slid the photo over, and Raylan drank his beer and looked around. The bar looked subtly different with less light and a little neon, but it was still too something — too clean, too new, maybe. Like a stage set for a movie full of extras, only they had forgot to hire any. The joint was almost empty.

Raylan, if pressed, couldn't guess the number of gay men in Lexington, but even if you topped it up with guys like him who just dabbled, it wasn't enough to crowd a place on the regular, he didn't think. And it was a man's bar, too. No sign of women of any sort on any night of the week.

Raylan watched Freddie look at Tim's photo, and ignored what he said.  He didn't recognize the guy, Raylan would bet on it, and he was beginning to wonder about this tip.

"You have waiters in the back room?" Raylan asked.

"We do," Freddie said, and he gestured at two fellows sitting at a table. Raylan had taken them for customers.

They had a look to them, small, slender, but muscled up a little here and there, to not look too young. He was reminded of Jack. They were wearing tight t-shirts that ended north of their jeans by an inch or so, offering some views of skin that were eye catching, and their jeans left not much to the imagination. The point, Raylan figured, was for the customers to find the waiter coming and going enticing enough to follow him to see what else was to look at in the back room.

But if they were staff, then the bar was really dead.

"It picks up around ten," Freddie said, seeing him look around. "If you want to talk to the boys out back, early is a good time."

Raylan drained his beer, and stood up. Tim joined him, ready to match him a pace behind. They looked like cops. Raylan pulled his jacket over his gun and badge, and gestured to a table that had a view of the whole place. "Wait for me. I want to see if these boys will talk a little."

"Don't forget to catch 'em, when they start fallin'," Tim said.

Raylan glared at him and wandered to the beaded curtain that showed the way to the back room. It reminded him of the trailers at Audrey's.

The hallway was clean and well lit, showed signs of a recent paint job, and had two washrooms on one side with a single locked door on the other. The end of the hallway turned sharply and revealed a pulsating world of black walls, chrome-plated everything and pink neon, all set to an annoying techno beat. The hallway kept the sound from invading the bar out front very cleverly.

There were a scattering of customers; at eight o'clock, the show was just about to start, and the waiter tandem appeared, expecting him to order the two drink minimum for the back room.

Raylan ordered a beer and a double bourbon and sat at a table from the edge of the stage. The two chrome cages hung up on the wall, one on each end of the stage, were empty, but in a short time, the music got louder, the lights dimmer, and two barely dressed white boys climbed in from the stage and began an unalluring grind to the beat.

Raylan had never really been a man who wanted to look at other men in a that sort of way. But Tim wasn't so far off when he said that in the right environment where a man would hit on him, he could be interested pretty quick.

Aside from the minor similarity to Jack Whiteside in all the lithe, young bodies on display, there was nothing much in the show to turn him on. One guy, another blond out of a bottle, had a sense of humour about him as he did a campy bump and grind that ended with him flashing his tight ass in a cheeky wiggle.

In the interest of getting some enjoyment in his life, Raylan held up a bill in two fingers and caught his eye.

"Hey, cowboy, you want to go for a ride?" The kid said when he'd approached.

Raylan laughed and heard himself ask, "How old are you, anyway?" He'd gotten uptight in his old age.

"Fully legal, so don't worry about that? What do you want? Ten minutes or the full service?"

"I didn't know either of those options were legal. I just want a chat."

"Kinky," the kid said.

"What's your name?"

"Kris, with a K," he said, warily, and with only a little hesitation.

"Okay, Kris, with a K. I'm going back out front where my friend is — are you allowed out there?"

"Sure, between shows," Kris said. "You boys want to have a third? I'm good for that."

"I want a chat, and I'd prefer you had your pants on," Raylan said.

"Really kinky. What's your name, kinky cowboy?"

Raylan shook his head. He must be going mad, but he liked the kid. "Raylan, he said. Come sit with us for a minute. I'll buy you a beer if you like."

Raylan left the back room before any of the sparse crowd could go for the advanced options on offer and dropped into the chair beside Tim with relief.

"You escaped," Tim said.

"Barely. One of the dancers is supposed to come and talk."

"Small crowd."

Raylan looked around. "I guess it's a weeknight, but it sure looks like they have twice as much of everything than they need." Raylan nodded to the bar, where a second man had joined Freddie in serving the three guys clustered at the far end.

Kris did appear, with a fruity looking cocktail and two beers held by their necks. He'd either never been a waiter, or he didn't care about the niceties. He set the beers down and smiled at Raylan as he sat down. "This is all on your tab. Freddie says you're good for it."

Kris wrapped his lips around the straw of his drink and sucked dramatically while looking at Raylan through his lashes. He spoiled the act by laughing too loud, but it was charming in its way.

"Can I see your ID?" Tim asked.

"Freddie said you guys weren't really cops," Kris countered.

"If you're going to keep working Raylan like a john, I want to see the age on your driver's licence." Tim held out his hand.

Raylan took the fresh beer and sat back and watched, refusing to rise to Tim's bait, but wishing he still had the rest of the bourbon he'd abandoned in the back room.

Kris dug out a card, not a wallet, just a single card and smiled as he handed it over. He had an honest to god dimple in one cheek, and Raylan smiled back, conscious his eyes showed his age when he did that.

"Looks real, for whatever the hell that's worth," Tim said, handing it back. "You always keep it on you?"

"Sure in case some cop tries to fuck with me, or some customer, and I want to step out real fast. Always good to have it on hand."

"I want to show you a picture," Tim said.

"I'll look at it if the cowboy will dance with me," Kris said.

Raylan opened his mouth to object when the volume on the music rose and the lights dimmed. The twangy old country tunes gave way to twangy new country tunes, and a few dancers appeared to shuffle around the open space on the floor in front of the stage.

"I don't think I've ever danced with a man," Raylan said, relying on honesty to get him out of the fix he was in. "Ain't so great with women, to tell you the truth."

Kris nodded. "You're too tall. Sorry I'm not more your size, but come on, and I'll show you how." He stood up, drink abandoned, hand held out, challenge in the set of his jaw. He was a proud man, Raylan thought, not wanting to be played by the straight cops without scoring a few points back.

"Picture first. Just look and then think about it," Raylan said.

Tim handed over the photo, and Kris looked at it, chewing his bottom lip all the while. "Not real sure," he said and handed it back.

"Okay," Raylan said, and stood up, then paused. "I'm keeping my hat on."

"Oh, honey, you sure as hell are," Kris said, and Raylan grabbed his hand, ignored his pounding heart and Tim's elaborate sigh. He really had no idea what the hell he was doing. Acting out for Tim's benefit, maybe, or Art's. Maybe his own.

Kris showed him how to hold onto a man and how to move around the dance floor in a way that was about like his high school dances only with less nerves or cleavage to try not to stare at.

"You're not gay," Kris said, leaning up to speak into Raylan's ear. "Buy you ain't all the way straight either."

"I am aware of that. I said I never danced with a man, Kris, not other things."

"Oh, okay then," he said, smiling slow. "How about you steer us over to that far side of the dance floor, cowboy, and I'll test that out."

Raylan did as he was asked, and when Kris took over the wheel and moved them up against the wall, Raylan let him. He kissed back when Kris had his arms wound around Raylan's neck and was grinding less urgently than he'd expected. It was strange. He'd never kissed a man anywhere but in private, and here he was, damn near having sex with Kris in public, and he didn't want to stop. It was fun, not making him anything much but horny, only inside his head it was all lights going off and bells ringing over the situation.

"You sure you don't want to go somewhere for the full service," Kris whispered in his ear, reminding Raylan that this wasn't Jack giving him a freebie for his own reasons, and he needed to pump the brakes before he was fucking up this case with his dick again.

"You can't always get what you want, Kris," Raylan said, laying on the regret like he was penning lyrics for the next hit out of Nashville. "You come tell Tim what you think about his photo before you go back to work."

"Oh, cowboy, crash me back to earth," Kris said with great drama. "Okay, come on then," Kris held out his hand and led Raylan back to the table. "He's a good dancer," Kris said to Tim, drinking from the red frothy cocktail and laying on a wink for extra sauce.

"If that's dancing, I've been doing it wrong all these years," Tim said.

"You remind me of Julius," Kris told him, and then added, "Let me see that picture."

Kris frowned over it. "He a tall guy? Short? It's hard to say from a head shot."

"Never met the man," Tim said.

Kris nodded. "Best I can say is he's familiar. He don't look very gay, if you know what I mean. You or Raylan got more of that than this fellow, but we get guys like that. That's an ugly as fuck haircut though."

Tim almost smiled and collected the photo and put it away.

"Kris, you work all the time?" Raylan asked.

"Not every night, no. If you're as good as me, you get weekend shifts, so I get days off."

"For a while now? Weeks, months, what?"

Kris tilted his head. "Couple of months. Before that, I worked up in Louisville, oh …"

Raylan leaned in.

"Raylan, honey, I think I saw this guy in Louisville. Taller than me. Most guys are, but more like your friend here than you. Not in shape like you guys. And a bit of a scar on one arm, just a few inches. That's all I saw, you know?"

"I do," Raylan said. "Where in Louisville?"

"The club there."

"Okay?" Raylan said.

Kris rolled his eyes. "Bourbon a Go Go."

"You're kidding," Tim said. "It's really called that?"

"Yeah?" Kris asked, confused. "It's 'cause this is the Go Go Room, see."

"Yeah," Tim said. "Sure. Same owner?"

Kris shrugged. "I guess. Ask Julius, he knows about stuff like that. If we need to ask stuff when the boss isn't here, we ask him."

"And the boss is in Louisville?" Raylan asked.

"Yeah. But, Raylan, that was two months ago at least I saw that guy."

"Okay, Kris, sweetheart, thanks for helping out."

"Awww, Raylan, you sweet on me?" Kris asked, and then he stood up and hurried to the back room.

Raylan tried to keep any sign of distress off of his face that those words had stirred up. Tim looked at him with a troubled expression. "Raylan are we road tripping to Louisville?"

"Ask Art that question," Raylan said, "He's the boss."

"Okay, if you say so. I'm going home, if you want to go chase your latest blond, I don't want to watch."

Raylan waved Tim off and told himself he was just there to finish his beer. He did. He finished that and a couple of bourbons at the bar with two guys who were almost his age and got all his jokes. Lexington had cabs. He could go home alone and half in the bag and not feel like an old man or a failure if he set his mind to it.

He felt like an old and hungover man the next morning. The face in the mirror wouldn't attract any positive attention from any young men or women, he was sure.

Coffee had made him feel better, but he didn't think he looked better, and he'd overcompensated with a proper shirt and tie that was too hot even at eight in the morning.

He headed right for Art's office when he arrived.

"How did it go?" Art said, after a significant pause while he took in Raylan's appearance.

"We got a tip, and I want you to listen to what Tim says about it."

"Why?"

"I'm suspicious of my own shadow these days, and it all just seemed too easy. You got anyone can get you financial information on that bar?"

"Maybe," Art said, "not in a hurry, though. You think this is bigger than just Morse?"

Tim stuck his head in the door, and Raylan gestured at him. "Ask him."

"Ask me what?" Tim said sliding into the second seat.

"Raylan's suspicious of your tip."

Tim raised a brow. "I thought the guy was just hustling you, not running a con, if that's what we're talking about."

"Hustling how?" Art demanded.

"The guy, Kris," Tim said, "he's a pro, or a semi-pro. He liked that Raylan liked him, so he was playing up to him, but I don't think the tip is bogus. That seemed way too genuine, and his acting wasn't that good the rest of the time."

"Raylan liked him?" Art asked.

"Blond," Tim said before Raylan could come up with any way out of that part of the conversation.

"That works for men and women?" Art asked.

"Isn't that sort of a personal question?" Raylan asked.

"I guess it is. Sorry, Raylan."

"Blond is not required," Raylan said. "That's all in Tim's mind. But if you want to know if playing along with some stripper trying to hustle me was a big struggle, no. Never danced with a fella before, though."

Art stared at him, and Raylan smiled.

"What is the tip, exactly?" Art said.

"Kris claims that he saw Morse in the club in Louisville about a month ago or longer. It's called the Bourbon a Go Go, and we're assuming it's all one owner."

Art laughed. "You're kidding, Bourbon a Go Go?"

"Someone has a sense of humour," Raylan said. "I'd like to know who owns these places, but a trip to Louisville might be worth it."

"What does your suspicious mind think?"

"It's the wrong setup for money laundering," Tim objected before Raylan even opened his mouth.

"It's like they have twice the staff they need all the time," Raylan said. "What if all those names on the payroll are the price to create a plausible set of books that shows a lot more customers than are real?"

Tim pursed his lips. "Maybe."

"So, let me get this straight," Art said. "I sent you on a nothing job, and after one day, you've turned it into a bigger case? Two cases?"

"I did nothing," Tim said. "No one wanted to dance with me."

"Julius likes you," Raylan said.

"Point. I should drop in at lunch or something. Unless we're hitting the road?"

"We can go in the afternoon," Raylan said. "See if he'll tell you anything about how the business is set up."

Tim left to go file his reports on the night before, and Raylan stood up, spun his hat around on one hand. "Is this a problem?" he asked finally.

"What, you spoiling my fun?" Art asked. "No, not a problem, just a lesson for me to listen to Tim more often. But I guess my question is, Raylan, is this going to be a problem for you? First time some guy who isn't a pro figures out hitting on you might get him what he wants, what happens?"

"What? Blackmail?" Raylan asked, incredulous and offended. "Never happen. I wouldn't let it. But I am sorry, Art, I didn't have the gay panic you wanted to enjoy watching."

Raylan turned and left, annoyed beyond sense and feeling exposed. Like everyone could see. He'd been fine in the bar, even with Tim there. It wasn't until he'd been home alone that he'd considered if Kris was really the man Raylan wanted to be his first in public. Or if he should have even done that much in public.

Tim called him later from the Go Go Room, and Raylan swung by and picked him up. They drove to Louisville mostly in silence after Tim's report that Julius had just told him to ask the boss in Louisville if they needed anything more than generalities.

"I asked around, and no one seemed to know our guy. But one customer on his lunch break told me that there's a lot of daytime people like him that just come in at lunch when the kitchen is open and never go in the back room, not even if they drop by in the evening."

"Yeah, okay. Makes sense," Raylan said.

"The fries are good."

"I'll remember that."

"Is there any other way into that back room?" Tim asked as they were crawling along towards the Louisville downtown.

"There's an exit. I saw someone leave that way, but you can't open it from the outside, I checked."

"But if someone let you in because you wanted to be there on the QT?"

Raylan frowned. "Maybe. Maybe there's nothing to all this, and the Go Go empire is just a not very good business run by a stupid guy who likes strippers. Nice strippers, not sleazy ones."

"Sure," Tim said.

The Bourbon a Go Go looked very different to the streetview image of the same address from a year before. It had been a strip club then, and the old cinder block exterior had been unadorned and windowless. You could see the old shape still there under a stucco and paint job that made it look less like a warehouse. There were windows in the front, and once Raylan stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the dim interior — he had time while he waited for Tim to catch up — he saw a familiar looking place.

The dimensions were different, the bar was over to the left instead of in the middle of the room, and it blocked off a section of the interior with a door at one end that looked like it led to a kitchen, but the look was the same.

"You figure drag night is Wednesday here, just to make it work out?" Tim asked, looking around.

"Have we stumbled on the world's first franchise gay strip club?" Raylan asked.

"You want to buy in? Open the Rum a Go Go in the keys? All this could be yours, Raylan."

"Sure, me and my $500 savings would get me all that."

"Will it get us a beer each?" Tim asked.

"Might stretch."

The bartender was quieter than Julius, and the place seemed less filled than the joint in Lexington. That didn't add up, but maybe it was just a quiet day. "How long you been open?" Tim asked the bartender.

"Couple of months. We was closed for a while. 'S why it's so quiet. The regulars haven't come back."

Tim nodded and picked up the notice card laminated in plastic. "Drag night is Monday," he said to Raylan.

"Not real popular yet," the bartender said.

"What about the strip show?" Raylan asked.

"They draw. Good boys, for the most part. Clean, you know?"

Raylan raised a brow and looked at Tim. Tim pulled the picture from his pocket and handed it over. The bartender nodded immediately, and Raylan thought they might have struck lucky. "I had you for cops."

"Not cops," Tim said. "And all we want is to find this guy. Witness to an incident."

"Incident?" the bartender said. "Ask the boss, if you like. He knows Louisville better 'n me. I only come up from Memphis about two months ago."

"When does the show start?" Raylan asked.

"About eight," the bartender said, looking at his watch as if by habit.

"This boss around?" Tim asked.

"Should be."

"Should I kick in the door?" Raylan asked patiently, after he'd waited a decent interval.

The bartender picked up a phone off the bar and rapidly sent a text. He waited for a reply and then waved at the hallway that Raylan figured by its look led to the back room. He looked at Tim and shrugged. They walked down the hallway, Tim a couple of paces behind.

Across from the washrooms was the expected plain door. Raylan shrugged again and knocked. He heard a voice, and he'd swear on the bible he didn't feel a thing, no foreboding, no sense of his own impending doom. He just opened the door, walked in and stared at Jack Whiteside, in a skinny charcoal suit, purple shirt and a tie the colour of raspberry ice cream, sitting behind a desk.

Neither of them had said a word by the time Tim walked in and said, "Well, shit."

"You should just go," Raylan said to Tim, not even sure where it came from, but knowing it was what he believed in his bones. Jack hadn't moved, hadn't so much as made a wry face. And Raylan also knew, the way you did when you did his job the way he did it, that Jack had a gun holstered under his jacket.

"As in back to Lexington?" Tim asked, sarcastic, but maybe serious, Raylan couldn't always tell.

"Yes," Jack said, firmly. "Tell the bartender on the way out I said to look at your photo again."

Raylan heard the door close, hadn't really noticed Tim leaving, and Jack twisted his lips into something that wasn't a smile. "I have a conceal carry license, you want to see it?"

Raylan raised his brows and stood with his hands on his hips and just had nothing to say.

"I heard about your night out in Lexington," Jack said, filling the silence, "My guy got the story all fucked up, though, and claimed you two were cops. I-Raylan did you really make out with Kris on the Go Go Room dance floor? Had to be you."

"I did," Raylan said, nodding. "Teenager stuff. Fun, though. Does he realize you can tell his overpriced drinks he charges to your tab have no liquor in them if he kisses like that?"

Jack laughed. "I'll be sure to tell him."

"You running a fluff and fold, Jack, or a rub and tug? I can't tell."

"Why the fuck do you care?" Jack asked, instantly angry, and genuinely so, if Raylan was a judge. Which didn't mean he wasn't running a brothel or a money laundering operation or both. He stood up and came around the desk and right at Raylan without stopping. Raylan's right hand landed unerringly on Jack's gun, his left on his face. Raylan tilted Jack's head up, and he did not kiss Jack Whiteside like he was in public or like he was a teenager.

"What is that? A 9mm?" Raylan asked, when Jack had pulled his mouth off to breathe.

"Jesus, Raylan," Jack said, laughing. "Is that a gun in your holster, or is it the hard thing lower down you want me to suck?"

Raylan might have been less on top of his emotions than he'd been letting on inside his own head because he burst out in nervous laughter and had to wipe tears from his eyes after he'd stopped.

Jack had moved back to sit on the edge of his own desk while he waited for Raylan to clam down. "I am not fucking you in this goddamn office," Jack said sharply when Raylan started looking him over with intent..

"Wherever the hell you want," Raylan said. "Sooner better than later."

"My car's out the back."

"This'll go better if we just don't talk," Jack said when they were in a nondescript silver Toyota that was travelling well over the speed limit on a series of backstreets.

Raylan had nothing to say that wasn't just want given a voice, and Jack clearly understood what he wanted, so they drove in silence to a suburb of low-slung family homes set in perfect green lawns. Jack turned into a driveway, the garage door opened, and the car rocked to a halt inside. It was totally empty, but for the car.

The house had furniture, but it was realtor stage dressing until they got to the bedroom. That room looked at least nominally lived in. There was a bed, a nightstand that was revealed to contain condoms and lube and a handy pack of wet wipes, and Raylan presumed the closet was full of skinny suits and purple shirts.

The house was new enough to be sealed off from the outside world so the drone of a lawnmower couldn't mar an afternoon and early evening spent grunting and groaning and demanding satisfaction harder and faster, and fuck yeah, Raylan, like that.

Jack hadn't changed. Raylan hadn't either.

It was dull and too quiet to stay awake, the white noise of the air conditioning drowning out all Raylan's higher brain functions. The shower was just audible with the door shut to the bathroom. Raylan rolled over half onto his stomach and wrapped his left arm half around his head to block the sound. Showers meant the world outside his body, his dick, his desire, and that world had phones and Tim and Art and fugitives he was supposed to chase.

The quality of the silence changed, and Raylan rolled back over to face the world, blinking in the light. Jack was standing by the bed looking at Raylan, at his body. Jack was an appreciative audience, so Raylan stretched and smiled, trying to look seductive without making the man laugh. He liked to laugh at Raylan's sentimental side.

"You like it?" Raylan asked.

"It?" Jack said.

"Me," Raylan corrected. "The outside of me," he added.

"I shouldn't fuel the ego inside of you, Raylan Givens, but I do still think you're attractive."

"Still?"

"You thought that was all fake before?" Jack asked.

"No, no, and can we go back to that not talking?" Raylan held out his arms, invitation, entreaty. He ignored the risk he might get told no because you never got anywhere in life if you couldn't conquer that fear. He'd beaten it to death in his youth.

"Why the hell, not?" Jack said.

It was different, the second time. Slower and softer, and something else Raylan didn't like to think on. He fell asleep again — too much sex, and liquor with the sex, or just the release of being AWOL for a day knocked him out.

It was dark when he woke up, and the house was silent. He had a shower — the bathroom looked more lived in than the bedroom, he noticed, and he slowly put his too-formal shirt and tie on, clipped his gun and badge back to his belt, became himself again, outside and in.

He found Jack in the kitchen with a glass of what looked to be nothing but water, raspberry tie not done up all the way, hair mussed the way he'd worn it before, not all slicked back like he'd had it that afternoon in his office. Raylan wondered if that was intentional.

"Jack," Raylan said.

"Deputy," Jack answered. He was leaning on the counter, and he looked up at Raylan, face a serious mask. Raylan remembered this Jack just as much as the one that liked sex exactly the right way. Raylan was convinced that was real preference for a certain sort of intimacy, hard and fast, but with bodies pressed together, limbs always wound around each other. This face of Jack's, Raylan had no idea if that was a pose or not.

Raylan had a lot of things he should be asking: What had Jack been doing bird-dogging him on the Quarles case. What the hell was the Go Go empire all about. Did he know Morse, and was Morse his laundry man. All of it shit he should dig into. Instead he said, "What the hell is this house?"

"I live here," Jack said, affronted.

"Why?"

Jack held his pose of anger, and then relaxed and shrugged. "Guy who owned it owed me. He had invested in a deal, wanted the cash out, so I told him he could pretend I was the US Government and he could forfeit his asset in compensation. Here I am."

Raylan looked around. "You just took this place?"

"Same as you all do all the time, Raylan.

"So you own that bar? Both bars, for real?"

"I have backers. Investors. But yes, it's my company that runs them."

"Why does every damn crook in Kentucky get in the real estate business?"

"Not just Kentucky," Jack said. "And the answer's obvious. To make money."

"But why here in this house?"

"You don't think I fit in here, Raylan? You don't think I can be the suburban man with his garage full of toys and a lawn you can putt a fucking golf ball on? Isn't that what every red-blooded American man wants? His own little shard of the American dream?"

"Jesus, I hate when you talk like that," Raylan said, annoyed at the accent put on to mimic Raylan's own that reminded him far too much of Boyd. "You know you look older in that suit, too."

"You mean that I look younger naked. I know that."

"I don't," Raylan said, dejected suddenly and looking for an excuse to leave that excused the other questions he hadn't asked.  "I'm turning into a stringy-looking old man."

"Your pubic hair is going grey."

"Fuck off!"

"It is," Jack said, "nothing but the truth."

Jack was amused, but Raylan suddenly wasn't. "What the fuck is the truth, Jack? Tell me one damn thing that isn't a lie?"

"Just one? Which one, baby? That you're a damn good fuck even if you are an old man?"

Raylan rubbed his face. "You look fucking ridiculous in that tie," he said, instead of answering Jack's irritating question.

"So do you."

"I was compensating."

"I know you don't mean for your lack of confidence, Raylan, so for what exactly?"

"For being hungover as fuck, Jack. Why were you watching me back then?"

"I was hired to make sure Robert Quarles did not finish his business in Harlan County among the living. You ain't hard to learn things about, Raylan. Your reputation precedes you, so I let you do the work. I was just there to make sure you didn't die trying. You ran my prints?"

"Tim did."

Jack nodded. He looked so cool, leaning on the counter in a house more like a stage set than his bars were. It was annoying because Raylan was not cool. Hadn't been in bed with Jack.

"Do you know Barry Morse?" Raylan asked.

"I do not. He's your man in the photo?"

Raylan nodded. "You willing to show me your employment records, who worked what night, so I can question them?"

"Get a warrant."

Raylan nodded again. "Or bust you for running a brothel."

"Fuck off, Deputy. You think I don't know how to set up a clean business? You try to get something on me, and you will fail."

Raylan wondered exactly what Jack meant by clean. He supposed if the boys in the back kept all of their lap dance money, then the house stayed un-indictable without a lot of hassle. "We get along better naked," Raylan said.

Jack shrugged. "It's the tie. It locks all the blood in your brain, stops you thinking with your dick like you should."

"Thinking with my dick gets me in trouble."

Jack smiled, sadly, Raylan thought. "Trouble is fun sometimes," Jack said.

"I gotta go, Jack. Deal with my phone." Deal with his life was more the truth.

Jack nodded. "Call the bar if you want anything I might give you without a warrant. You boys going back to the Lexington club to flash your picture around?"

"Maybe. Not sure what the priority is."

"Tell Kris I said hello," Jack said.

Raylan raised a brow. "So he'll know he's been warned off? Isn't that a little presumptuous."

"You're being presumptuous, Raylan. I got no call to warn anyone off of anything."

"Okay. You don't want me thinking you like me a little. I get it."

Jack stared at him, angry, Raylan would say, and then Jack tightened up his tie and yanked open a cupboard, grabbed the gun sitting there, made a show of checking the safety. He opened his jacket and shoved the gun in the holster. Jack used a complicated full shoulder harness, and the straps barely rippled his perfectly tailored shirt. Raylan had watched him strip out of it with anticipation, but now it was reality intruding, a reminder of who Jack really was under his latest persona.

"Time to go," Jack said. "You want me to drop you somewhere?"

"The bar is fine," Raylan said.

The trip was quiet. Jack seemed to be simmering with some resentment Raylan couldn't fathom.

"Why'd you tell me that about Quarles? You could have lied," Raylan asked, when they were on the pavement behind the bar again.

"I could have. I didn't see the point, Raylan. I figured you had run my prints and had seen that fantasy of a file that fella in Florida has on me."

"Not all fantasy."

"Sure thing.  Raylan, you call me the next time you kill a man, and we'll talk."

"Give me your number, and I will." Raylan said it to be a dick, to hide the fact that what Jack said had stung. But he held his breath while Jack considered him. Jack pulled out his phone and banged it with his finger, harder than he needed to. Raylan's phone buzzed.

"There, now you have my number," Jack said. "The highway is that way if you're hitching," he added and pointed. He turned and walked off, used a key on a door at the back of the bar and disappeared.

Raylan considered making the Louisville PD drive him home, but he grabbed a cab and got to a rental joint before they closed. He drove home in the Lexus he'd treated himself too. If he was indulging in men he couldn't have and a life he didn't belong in, he could add a decent ride to the list.

Tim was ready to ambush him in the morning before Raylan even got into the office. "You came back," Tim said, flatly.

"Of course," Raylan said, raising a hand to block the morning sun on the courthouse steps.

"Did you learn anything?"

He'd learned many things, but not much about the case. "Jack says he knows nothing about Morse."

"Do you believe him?"

Raylan paused. "I think … he was different. Not trying to sell me a character. I think I do. About that."

"Different?" Tim asked. "Like deadly killer different or something else?"

"Older. Angry. He seems to be in the real estate business."

"Isn't everyone?" Tim said.  "What are you telling Art?"

Raylan sighed. "That we don't have anything but some vague confirmation of the original tip. And unless we're going to continuously stake out the strip clubs in two cities, we're aren't getting anything else."

"We need an inside man. Someone who has the motivation to tip us."

"You think we can lean on Jack?"

Tim scoffed. "I'd never try. He finds you amusing, Raylan, meanwhile, even Boyd Crowder is a little afraid you'll shoot him. I'm not touching that dynamic."

Raylan thought Tim was being dramatic. Jack was just a guy who liked Raylan when he was naked, no different from a handful of other guys over the years, and several handfuls of women.

"I'll talk to Art," Raylan said.

He did, leaving out his personal life and focusing on the lack of results.

"What do you think?" Art asked when he was done.

"I think I'll take another trip to the club in town on Saturday night, talk to the strippers, but all we can do is ask for a call if Morse shows. Or the LPD can check once in a while."

Art made a face. "The LPD is not who I'd send in looking for positive results. What about your suspicions?"

"I still have them. But unless someone wants to expedite financial records, they aren't anything but my dim view of the world."

"I'll see what I can do," Art said. "We have other cases."

"That we do. And I have to be in court for this damn silly lawsuit, too."

"It won't seem so silly if he wins it."

"Dewey Crowe ain't winning this, Art."

"Give me a report on this Morse case, and I'll let you know if I get anything more."

Raylan went to the Go Go Room one more time, alone, and he drank the two drink minimum in doubles and watched the whole show. He felt totally disconnected from it all by the time it was over, so tired of seeing guys shake their asses and wave their dicks around. The crowd was bigger, the weekend drawing out more guys who did want to see that.

They were rowdy, loud, enjoying themselves, and Raylan couldn't find a way to feel what they were feeling. He thought about the house that Jack lived in, the quiet life, and he figured maybe he'd slept so well there because he was ready for that, ready to grow up and be a man who made that sort of life real.

It scared the shit out of him, the idea of being a father. 'Call me when you kill a man,' Jack had said. Did Nicky Augustine count? What would Jack say if Raylan had confessed what he'd done? All he'd ever told Winona was that it was taken care of, and she was content with that. Jack might ask him why he hadn't just taken out his gun and done it himself, which was a question Raylan hid from inside his own head.

Raylan shoved that thought away. He needed to get his career on track, needed to find that place he'd been in where he was sure that he was going to get a promotion, that he was going to be the man his child could look up to. The Go Go Room and the men in it had no place in his future. He knew that with a clarity he'd never felt before.

He asked around about Morse, tried to be friendly, tried to laugh at the campy jokes about his hat, but it all felt wrong. Like whoever that man was who'd thought he could be a Marshal and a father and a man who fucked other men for fun was gone, abandoned in a suburban house in Louisville, never to wake up again.

He went home to his dump of an apartment and thought again about moving out, growing up, either getting a real life or heading back to Florida.

He was sorry he'd ever revealed himself to Art. That was all he had to take away from the experience, that and a sense of how he had to turn his back on that side of himself forever.

-~***~-

Raylan was not in the office when all hell broke loose. Fresh hell, that is. The old shit was rolling downhill fast at him from every direction. Art barely spoke to him since he'd come clean on Nicky Augustine, Tim was keeping his head down, and Rachel left him with no doubt whose side she was on.

There shouldn't be sides. Or, at least they should be on the same side. That's how Raylan saw things, so it was how he was going about his business.

He was late to the office because he'd been up late dealing with the news of the near death of Alex Miller. Miller had stirred him up, opened up a bunch of places he'd thought he'd walled off in his mind. He'd never had a thing for older men, at all. And mostly, Miller made him feel like he'd met himself from 20 years in the future, but Raylan also found him a bit something. Sexy, sort of. There was some kind of attraction there, and it was like an itch in his brain he just wanted gone.

He could either spend his life figuring out his fucked up head, or he could live his life. There wasn't enough time to do both. The office was buzzing when he walked in, and the damned fishbowl conference room showed him why.

Jack Whiteside was at one end of the table, a right hand lackey who had to be a lawyer sitting calmly watching Art at the other end. Rachel, Tim and Vasquez almost filled the seats along the sides, leaving one empty. It looked like a Thanksgiving dinner in hell. His own personal hell. He assumed the ghost of Arlo was clinging to the ceiling ready to swoop down and pour poison in his ear.

They were all staring at him, so Raylan left his damn hat on and strode to the door and pulled it open. "Jack, I thought you said you'd shoot me if you ever saw me again," Raylan opened with. Because there was no hellfire he couldn't stoke a little hotter if given half a chance.

Jack ducked his head and smiled, like threatening to shoot guys was just part of his charm.

"What?" Art said. "Is that true?" he directed to Jack, not Raylan. Raylan hadn't been invited to the party, wasn't trusted to tell the truth without corroboration, so he didn't sit.

"It was in the manner of a personal dispute," Jack said dismissively.

"You saying you didn't mean it?" Raylan asked, pinning Jack with a stare, trying to convey just how spectacularly angry he was at this ambush.

"Oh, I did. At the time. Times change."

"You want something," Raylan said. He wrenched the chair out and sat.

"Now that you're here," Art said, as if Raylan had been asked to attend and just showed up tardy like a rude schoolboy who'd dallied on the road on a sunny morning, "Mr Whiteside was telling us just how he knows so many Marshals in my office."

Tim looked guilty, but Raylan tilted his head up and said, "Jack showed up sniffing around when I was working on the Quarles case. I reckoned at the time he was hustling for something, but he never got to the pitch, so I remained ignorant about what that was. And then Tim and I discovered he ran the Go Go empire there a few weeks back. Nothing turned up there either."

Jack smiled slightly and nodded, scoring a point to Raylan for telling the story first.

"And then he threatened to shoot you," Art said. "Out of the blue?"

"We had a personal relationship. And I said something intemperate on the phone one day," Raylan said and waved a hand to tell everyone to fill in the rest. No one in the room would be surprised by his explanation. "He has a conceal carry licence, did you frisk him?"

Jack slapped his palm on the table and snapped, "Raylan, am I stupid? Do I show up here armed?"

"You have a licence to carry a concealed weapon?" Art asked calmly.

"Which means I've never been convicted of a felony, yes," Jack said. He was much nicer to Art.

Tim looked up at Raylan and raised a brow. It was technically true as far as they knew.

"Which is why I'm here," Jack said. "And I came here because of Deputy Gutterson, not Raylan. Deputy Gutterson is also not a stupid man, and he ran my prints. So he has a copy of a file on me a certain FBI agent in Florida has produced in his spare time."

Art and Rachel turned to look at Tim in such unison, it looked planned. Raylan tipped a look at Jack and leaned back.

Tim said, "It confirms what Whiteside just said. He has no convictions. He has left a trail of suspicion behind him, but—"

"This file," the lawyer said, surprising Raylan with a heavy Boston accent, "is the personal collection of a few unrelated pieces of circumstantial evidence mixed in with supposition and lies and all bolstered with a padding of superficially similar case notes knit into a sum so greater than the whole of its parts, it can only be called a conspiracy theory."

"What's the theory?" Art asked.

The lawyer looked with distaste at Art for forcing him to voice the conclusion of the FBI agent's pet project. "There is a case before the courts right now on the reliability of fingerprint evidence," the lawyer said instead of answering.

Vasquez looked interested for the first time. "That will take years to settle," he said.

"What is the theory?" Art demanded of the room at large.

"That Jack is a hit man," Tim said.

Jack didn't flinch. Raylan wondered idly, among the people in the room, who had the lowest body count. Vasquez or Jack's lawyer excepted, it might be Rachel, and then Jack.

"A gay hit man," Jack said, amused. "Let's not leave that part out. I'm sure that fellow in Florida can imagine the headlines as he adds more fiction to his file."

Art, maybe predictably, turned to Raylan. "You sure do pick 'em."

"I picked him," Jack said, briskly. "And now I'm here to pay for that." He reached into his breast pocket, smiling broader at Art's obvious tensing up, and flicking a glance to Tim and to Raylan, both totally at ease. Jack slid a photo across the table, and it rested aligned so Art could see it, and Raylan was looking at it sideways. So was Tim opposite him on the far side of the table.

The photo showed Barry Morse and a man Raylan didn't know. The background had been digitally blanked out. Art reached out and looked at the photo and handed it to Vasquez.

"When was this taken?" Vasquez asked.

"Deal first, then questions," Jack's lawyer said.

Vasquez made a face. "If this is old, then it's nothing."

"You know it's not," Jack said, sharply, "so cut the bullshit." The scar was clearly visible in the photo.

Vasquez looked up and smiled slowly. "What do you have?"

"His new name, not his current location, but the undoctored photo is revealing. A few other bits of information."

"Did you know this when Tim and I were in your bar?" Raylan asked, and Vasquez frowned.

Jack looked at the table. "I knew who he was. I lied to you about that. But the fact he'd been in my bars was news to me. Unwelcome news. So I made it my business to find out a few things." He looked up, and met Raylan's eye. "You see, Raylan, I could make my boys talk when you could only dance with them and hope they might like you enough to spill."

"What do you want?" Vasquez asked.

The lawyer started talking, and Jack held up a hand, getting silence. "It's simple. I want that file, and all the bullshit in it, to go away. I want Agent Trillingby to stop handing out his conspiracy theory. I want no hits on my prints to lead to him or his nonsense. And I want my juvenile records expunged as they should already have been."

"You going straight?" Raylan asked, smirking to let Jack know he was being a jackass on purpose. Not that Jack would doubt him.

"Are you?" Jack asked, which Raylan should have seen coming.

"No future crimes are covered by this deal," Vasquez said. "No prior acts not covered in this file are covered either."

Jack made a face and looked at the lawyer. The lawyer looked back, and Jack nodded, then he turned to Raylan. "To answer your question, Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens, I have a real estate deal in Louisville I want to finalize before I'm so old my hair turns grey, and I don't want this hit man hoseshit to fuck that up. I don't want you fucking up my life, or Tim or any of your friends, Raylan, is that clear enough?"

The ice in his voice was enough to freeze a man's balls off on a hot summer day. Raylan tried to match him. "Every fucking mobbed up son of a bitch ends up in real estate. Maybe we should just kill all the realtors."

"Amen," said Jack's lawyer, and Tim looked like he was about to slide to the floor rather than laugh in a meeting with every person who owned a slice of his future.

"The real crooks are in city government," Jack said calmly, "but I wouldn't expect you all to understand that."

"When do we get your information?" Art asked.

"When the deal is signed," Jack's lawyer answered.

Raylan found a really good excuse to get the hell out of Dodge while Jack was sitting around waiting for the deal to be signed and sealed so he'd have to deliver.

There was hell out in the world enough. Crowe hell, Crowder hell, all of it leading people to death and moral decay, some of it Raylan's own.

Raylan didn't see Jack again, didn't call him again because that way lay true madness.

The first time he'd called was only a few days after he'd vowed to put Jack into his past, just like a drunk hiding the bourbon in the kitchen cupboard. He'd made the call about work, about following up on the hunt for Morse, but it had turned personal fast, and he'd sworn to himself after that was it, never again.

He'd moved in with Alison, and known every minute he was acting out a fantasy because it was one Jack would have revelled in, and Raylan had missed him, dreamed of him in the mansion that dirty money had bought.

He'd called the second time when Allison had left him alone to sleep in the big bed on his own. "Raylan, baby," Jack had answered, obviously drunk, and Raylan had got instantly hard. He'd poured a bourbon and tried to catch up on the drunk, and they had spent an hour telling each other dirty stories and laughing until they came.

Jack had called him the third time, right when Raylan was raw from telling Art about setting up Nick Augustine, and he'd tried to tell Jack how he felt. He'd tried to tell Jack no one else would ever understand. He'd tried to tell Jack all of that without telling him the truth, and Jack had got angry, cutting like he could be, sharp tongued and vicious, and he'd told Raylan to go find a woman to marry and have more babies with. Raylan had been shouting when Jack had hung up on him.

The fourth time, Jack had threatened to shoot him. That was the time Raylan had told him the truth.

-~***~-

When the murder of Crowes was finally thinned out to a tolerable number, and Raylan figured he had nothing left in Harlan, no friends, no enemies to kill, none but Boyd, that was when Vasquez and Rachel talked him into staying long enough to see that one last demon put in hell before he went home to Florida.

Raylan had moved into a motel again. He'd realized he couldn't make a life in Lexington, so he'd stopped telling himself he ever would, but he went to the bar he'd lived over, where he'd met Jack, whenever he needed to drink.

Tim found him at the bar, and Raylan wasn't surprised. Tim had been watching, worried that Raylan was going too far off the rails, or just worried he'd take them all out when he stepped on the land mine.

What surprised him was that Tim had Rachel with him.

They made him relocate to a table away from the biggest and loudest crowd, but they let him keep his drink.

"Rachel is worried about Jack Whiteside," Tim said, direct, like he could be when anyone else would obfuscate. He saved his obfuscation for when you just wanted a straight answer.

Raylan looked at Rachel and wanted to tell her to go to hell. Instead he summoned all his patience and said. "Art said the deal with Jack held up, they found Morse and some accomplice I'm not allowed to know the name of. I've seen Jack's financial records. Too late to do any good, but if there's anything funny there with his new businesses, it'd take a deeper investigation to find it."

"I'm worried that he's a hit man, and he seems to know you very well," Rachel said.

"Kiss my ass," Raylan said and took a drink.

"I think what Rachel meant," Tim said, tilting her a look, "is that we're going after Crowder, who is connected. And Jack is maybe connected. Does that connect?"

"Don't matter if it does," Raylan said. "I'm getting Boyd. I'm going to Miami. Jack is in the past, all of that is."

"Does he know that?" Rachel asked.

"He should. He's the one who threatened to shoot me."

"Yeah, about that," Rachel said.

Raylan sighed and said, "Go get the bottle of Wild Turkey, and I'll tell you the whole thing." He wanted to was the thing. Say it all out loud, but he couldn't call Jack to do that, and he couldn't tell Winona.

Rachel brought him the Wild Turkey and three glasses, and he almost raised a fuss. He hadn't said he was sharing the booze.

"I called him on the phone," Raylan said.

"You gotta tell her about Louisville first," Tim said.

"How be you tell me about the Quarles case first," Rachel said.

"Fine," Raylan said. Fine. He filled her in on that, what they'd supposed, what Jack had claimed. She didn't say anything, just looked at him with her 'men are stupid' face. All women had one.

Raylan just powered on through the Louisville story. "Then Tim and I walk into the boss's office in that strip bar in Louisville, and there he was sitting."

"Sharp suit, slick looking. Gun on him. And they just told me to get the hell out," Tim said, drinking fast enough to catch up to Raylan.

"They?" Rachel asked.

"There was a certain electricity in the air. They said git, I got."

Raylan snorted. "He got all the way to Lexington, leaving me stranded. I rented me a fine specimen of an automobile to come home, so it all worked out."

"Many hours later," Tim said, and he and Raylan laughed while Rachel stared.

"And?" Rachel said.

"And one day I called him on the phone," Raylan said.

"I don't get it," Rachel said.

"I told him, and you know, you likely know this Rachel, but you, Tim, listen up here." Raylan pointed with his drink. "Don't ever tell someone they're the only one that really understands you when you're shacked up with some blonde in a crook's mansion."

"I might write that down, keep it in my wallet," Tim told him.

"It gets worse," Raylan said.

"Of course it does. Raylan Givens can always make it worse," Rachel said incredulously. "You're in love with him."

Raylan nodded. "Yup. Told him that. That's when he said he'd shoot me if he ever saw me again."

"Raylan," Rachel said, shaking her head. "Raylan you have a family."

"I know." He slammed his glass down and peered at Rachel, struck again by how beautiful her face was, how he could look at her for hours and not get tired of the curve of her cheek, the length of he lashes. "I said all this to myself. I ain't simple. I know I look it 'bout now, but I know that I can't ever have him, that life, that variety of Raylan. My uncle was that sort of Raylan, and I can't be. And I told him that."

"I'd have shot you," Tim said.

"Me too," Raylan said and poured a drink. He took a deep breath and thought about why Rachel was there, what she cared about. Her career, not his broken heart or his confused split-in-half self. "I'm getting Boyd, going to Florida. Gonna be a man with a lawnmower in his garage. For the rest of my life."

"Okay," Rachel said, nodding like that made sense.

And then Raylan told her the truth.

"You all remember the one-legged hacker?" he said, like he was changing the subject.

"Hard to forget," Tim said. Rachel just nodded.

"I had a talk with him. We covered several subjects, but he told me that when he got famous in high school for his hacking, he started making fake IDs for his friends too. He was in a children's hospital as a kid, cancer, why he's got just the one leg, and he figured out how to make IDs from the records of the dead kids he'd known over the years."

"Jesus," Rachel said, but Tim just poured another drink, like he'd seen the turn the conversation was taking a few miles back.

"He told me it's still the most popular way to make a solid fake identity. I think it's what Shelby did too. He said he remembered all their names, the kids who'd died while he was in the process of losing just a leg."

"Raylan," Tim said, when Raylan had gone quiet, contemplating the nature of a child in a hospital knowing they were going to die.

Raylan peered at the two of them. His friends, he supposed. "I checked. Double checked. Jack Whiteside of Amberly, Ohio died age 13 in the Children's Hospital of Cincinnati."

"So who the hell is he?" Rachel asked.

Raylan wanted to ask her if she meant on the inside or the outside, but he just took a drink and shrugged. He was going to get Boyd, go to Florida, grow up. He didn't need to know.


End file.
